"I simply raged within in those days," Napoleon once said to Las Casas. "I could have swallowed my food raw and it would have been cooked on its way down, I boiled so. They took me for a snow-clad Alp, when, as a matter of fact, I was a small Vesuvius, with a temperature that would have made Tabasco sauce seem like iced water by contrast."His treatment at the hands of his fellow-students did much to increase his irritability, but he kept himself well in hand, biding the time when he could repay their insults with interest. They jeered him because he was short--short of stature and short of funds;they twitted him on being an alien, calling him an Italian, and asking him why he did not seek out a position in the street-cleaning bureau instead of endeavoring to associate with gentlemen. To this the boy made a spirited reply.
"I am fitting myself for that," he said. "I'll sweep your Parisian streets some day, and some of you particles will go with the rest of the dust before my broom."He little guessed how prophetic were these words.
Again, they tormented Napoleon on being the son of a lawyer, and asked him who his tailor was, and whether or not his garments were the lost suits of his father's clients, the result of which was that, though born of an aristocratic family, the boy became a pronounced Republican, and swore eternal enmity to the high-born. Another result of this attitude towards him was that he retired from the companionship of all save his books, and he became intimate with Homer and Ossian and Plutarch--familiar with the rise and fall of emperors and empires. Challenged to fight a duel with one of his classmates for a supposititious insult, he accepted, and, having the choice in weapons, chose an examination in mathematics, the one first failing in a demonstration to blow his brains out. "That is the safer for you," he said to his adversary. "You are sure to lose; but the after-effects will not be fatal, because you have no brains to blow out, so you can blow out a candle instead."Whatever came of the duel we are not informed; but it is to be presumed that it did not result fatally for young Bonaparte, for he lived many years after the incident, as most of our readers are probably aware. Had he not done so, this biography would have had to stop here, and countless readers of our own day would have been deprived of much entertaining fiction that is even now being scattered broadcast over the world with Napoleon as its hero. His love of books combined with his fondness for military life was never more beautifully expressed than when he wrote to his mother: "With my sword at my side and my Homer in my pocket, I hope to carve my way through the world."The beauty and simplicity of this statement is not at all affected by Joseph's flippant suggestion that by this Napoleon probably meant that he would read his enemies to sleep with his Homer, and then use his sword to cut their heads off. Joseph, as we have already seen, had been completely subjugated by his younger brother, and it is not to be wondered at, perhaps, that, with his younger brother at a safe distance, he should manifest some jealousy, and affect to treat his sentiments with an unwarranted levity.
For Napoleon's self-imposed solitude everything at Brienne arranged itself propitiously. Each of the students was provided with a small patch of ground which he could do with as he pleased, and Napoleon's use of his allotted share was characteristic. He converted it into a fortified garden, surrounded by trees and palisades.
"Now I can mope in peace," he said--and he did.